The impact of Portuguese demographic changes on the demand and supply of blood in the region of Algarve

Dissertação de Mastrado, Gestão de Unidades de Saúde, Faculdade de Economia, Universidade do Algarve, 2016

A viabilidade económica da gestão sustentável do montado de sobreiro. Caso de estudo - Aldeia das Amoreiras

Dissertação de Mestrado, Economia do Turismo e Desenvolvimento Regional, Faculdade de Economia, Universidade do Algarve, 2016

Corporate governance : value creation and performance in credit unions

In this study, we examine the relationship between good corporate governance practices and the creation of value/performance of credit unions from 2010 to 2012. The objective was to create and validate a corporate governance index for credit unions, and to then analyse the relationship between good governance practices and the creation of value/performance. The problem question is: do good corporate governance practices provide value creation for credit unions? The research started by creating indices from factor analysis to identify latent dependent variables related to value creation and performance; next indices were created from the principal component analysis for the creation of independent latent variables related to corporate governance. Finally, based on panel data from regression models, the influence of the variables and indices related to corporate governance on the indices of value creation and performance was verified. Based on the research, it became evident that the Corporate Governance Index (IGC) is mainly impacted by Executive Management, with 40.31% of the IGC value, followed by the Representation and Participation dimension, with 34.07% of the IGC value. The contribution for academics was the creation of the Corporate Governance Index (IGC) applied for credit unions. As for the contribution to the system of credit unions, the highlight was the effectiveness of the mechanisms for economic-financial and asset management adopted by BACEN, credit unions and OCEMG.

Tratamento de diarreias neonatais em vitelos

Dissertação de Mestrado Integrado em Medicina Veterinária

Evaluación de la exposición al ruido industrial en los trabajadores de una planta de asfalto, en la provincia del Azuay y propuesta de plan de control

El presente trabajo se realizó en una Planta de Hormigón Asfáltico, donde se realizó el estudio del ruido como factor de riesgo bajo las perspectivas de: Salud Ocupacional, Seguridad e Higiene Industrial. Este enfoque holístico, define la influencia que éste riesgo laboral ejerce sobre la pérdida de agudeza auditiva. Se estableció inicialmente el marco teórico y legal vigente sobre el ruido, posteriormente se describió la metodología de estudio, operatividad de variables, y la muestra a estudiar. Luego se procedió a la caracterización de la población y área estudiada, así como las actividades productivas. Dentro de la Higiene Industrial, se monitoreó la exposición del nivel de presión sonora, se realizó el comparativo con el nivel permisible (TWA 8 horas) establecido en el “Reglamento de Seguridad y Salud de los Trabajadores”, D.E. 2393. En términos de Seguridad Industrial, se analizó el equipo de protección personal EPP utilizado, y las variables determinantes. En el ámbito de Salud Ocupacional, se estudió: características personales de trabajadores, patologías relacionadas con sordera, y un cuestionario de exposición al ruido. Finalmente se determinó la existencia de sobreexposición a ruido laboral en la empresa objeto de estudio, mediante el estudio del estado de salud auditiva de los colaboradores se determinó la gran incidencia de personal sano y finalmente se determinó las medidas de control a implementarse enfatizadas a la realidad descubierta en el presente estudio, las que incluyen cambios en equipos y maquinaria, buenas prácticas de trabajo, planes de adiestramiento y capacitación en todo el personal entre otros.

Importance of Ecological Factors and Colony Handling for Optimizing Health Status of Apiaries in Mediterranean Ecosystems

We analyzed six apiaries in several natural environments with a Mediterranean ecosystem in Madrid, central Spain, in order to understand how landscape and management characteristics may influence apiary health and bee production in the long term. We focused on five criteria (habitat quality, landscape heterogeneity, climate, management and health), as well as 30 subcriteria, and we used the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) to rank them according to relevance. Habitat quality proved to have the highest relevance, followed by beehive management. Within habitat quality, the following subcriteria proved to be most relevant: orographic diversity, elevation range and important plant species located 1.5 km from the apiary. The most important subcriteria under beehive management were honey production, movement of the apiary to a location with a higher altitude and wax renewal. Temperature was the most important subcriterion under climate, while pathogen and Varroa loads were the most significant under health. Two of the six apiaries showed the best values in the AHP analysis and showed annual honey production of 70 and 28 kg/colony. This high productivity was due primarily to high elevation range and high orographic diversity, which favored high habitat quality. In addition, one of these apiaries showed the best value for beehive management, while the other showed the best value for health, reflected in the low pathogen load and low average number of viruses. These results highlight the importance of environmental factors and good sanitary practices to maximize apiary health and honey productivity.

Formulación de estrategias para incentivar el turismo sostenible en Colombia, con énfasis en regiones con un alto nivel de desarrollo económico.

Actualmente el sector turismo se ha ido posicionando como una de las principales fuentes de prosperidad (en términos de empleo, bienestar y riqueza) por encima de grandes industrias como la automotriz y la petrolera, lo cual, es considerado por las Naciones Unidas como una gran oportunidad de desarrollo para los países emergentes. Colombia, es un ejemplo de esta situación por su gran potencial en turismo naturaleza, el cual está comenzando a incluirse en planes de desarrollo turístico como en Villavicencio, actual epicentro comercial de los llanos orientales y líder en el desarrollo turístico del Meta. El trabajo pretende ser un estudio de caso que evidencie los factores que han impedido que el desarrollo sostenible progrese de forma paralela al crecimiento turístico que se está dando en la región, enfocado en los alojamientos urbanos y rurales de la capital del Meta. A partir de esto, se realiza una encuesta a 42 hoteles, una vez vistos los resultados está, se analiza la manera en que es asimilada la sostenibilidad desde un punto de vista práctico. La información recopilada revela que los agentes turísticos presentan carencia de concientización, respecto al movimiento “verde” que se está dando a nivel mundial, no tienen como prioridad los temas sostenibles, desconocen las normas ambientales y no tienen claridad sobre los procesos de certificación

Barreiras e facilitadores à prática do acompanhamento farmacoterapêutico nos serviços farmacêuticos hospitalares portugueses

Objectivos: Identificar e compreender as barreiras e os facilitadores à prática do Acompanhamento Farmacoterapêutico (AFT) nos serviços farmacêuticos hospitalares portugueses. Método: Estudo qualitativo mediante realização de entrevistas semi-estruturadas a farmacêuticos hospitalares com e sem experiência no AFT e análise de conteúdo, retroactiva e temática. Resultados: Estrutura dos serviços farmacêuticos: barreiras (1) falta de tempo, organização das actividades orientadas para a logística, instabilidade dos recursos humanos, barreiras físicas à comunicação, relações em divergência; facilitadores (2) reestruturação, trabalho em equipa. Farmacêutico: (1) resistência à mudança, qualificação inadequada; (2) atitude positiva, legitimação, formação. Meio externo: (1) falta de apoio institucional, relacionamento com o doente, o médico e farmacêutico comunitário, ensino inadequado; (2) apoio institucional, procura do doente, cooperação com o médico e o farmacêutico comunitário, ensino adequado. Tecnologia: (1) acesso aos dados clínicos e a informação, método inadequado; (2) acesso à informação, método adequado, documentação, informatização, marketing, boas práticas. Conclusão: As entrevistas semi-estruturadas fornecerem uma visão ampla, detalhada e pragmática dos potenciais determinantes de uma prática generalizada do AFT nos serviços farmacêuticos hospitalares portugueses. /ABSTRACT: Objectives: To identify and understand the barriers and facilitators for the practice of Medication Therapy Management (MTM) in portuguese’s hospital pharmacy. Method: Qualitative study trough semi-structured interviews with MTM experienced and inexperienced hospital pharmacists followed by retroactive content and thematic analysis. Results: Structure of hospital pharmacy: barriers (1) lack of time, activities focused on logistics, instability of human resources, physical barriers to communication, divergent relationships; facilitators (2) restructuring, teamwork. Pharmacist: (1) resistance to change, inadequate skills, (2) positive attitude, legitimating, formation. Environment: (1) lack of institutional support, relationship with patient, physician and community pharmacist, inadequate teaching, (2) institutional support, patient's demand, cooperation with physician and community pharmacist, appropriate teaching. Technology: (1) lack of access to clinical data and information, inadequate method, (2) access to information, appropriate method, documentation, computerization, marketing, good pharmacy practices. Conclusion: The semi-structured interviews provide a broad, comprehensive and pragmatic view of potential determinants for wide practice of MTM in Portuguese’s hospital pharmacy.

Quando a morte antecede o nascimento: atuação do enfermeiro especialista em saúde materna e obstetrícia na assistência à mulher que vivência uma morte fetal

A perda gestacional é uma experiência dolorosa e complexa para a mãe/casal. O enfermeiro surge como promotor da adaptação á perda. Com esta intervenção, pretendo assegurar boas práticas de enfermagem na assistência às mulheres/casais em situação de perda gestacional. Foi realizado um estudo qualitativo em que se realizaram entrevistas a mulheres que vivenciaram perda gestacional e aos Enfermeiros Especialistas de Saúde Materna e Obstétrica como prestadores de cuidados. Os resultados mostram que os enfermeiros consideram a perda gestacional uma experiência difícil de vivenciar, identificando necessidades de formação. As mulheres referem diferenças na abordagem por parte dos enfermeiros aquando dos cuidados recebidos, falta de apoio e necessidade de encaminhamento após a alta hospitalar. Efetuou-se formação aos enfermeiros com peritos da área e desenvolveram-se procedimentos para uniformizar os cuidados. Foi criado um procedimento para uniformizar a prática e materiais de suporte para o apoio na prestação de cuidados de enfermagem; WHEN THE DEATH ANTECIPATES THE BIRTH: MIDWIVES' ROLE IN ASSISTANCE TO WOMENWHO EXPERIENCE FETAL DEATH. ABSTRACT: Pregnancy loss is a painful and complex experience to the mother/couple. The nurse is the promoting agent to the loss adaptation. With this project, I intend to ensure good nursing practices in assisting women/couples who experience a pregnancy loss. A qualitative study was performed, in which interviews were conducted to women who experienced a pregnancy loss and to nurse-midwives who provided care. Results demonstrated that nurse-midwives find pregnancy loss as a difficult experience, identifying educational needs. Women relate differences in the nurse-midwives’ approach during care, lack of support and the need of follow-up after hospital discharge. Nurse-midwives were subjected to training with experts and procedures were developed in order to standardize care. A practice standardizing procedure and educational materials were created to support nursing practice.

Soil quality assessment in conservation agriculture systems

Soil is a key resource that provides the basis of food production and sustains and delivers several ecosystems services including regulating and supporting services such as water and climate regulation, soil formation and the cycling of nutrients carbon and water. During the last decades, population growth, dietary changes and the subsequent pressure on food production, have caused severe damages on soil quality as a consequence of intensive, high input-based agriculture. While agriculture is supposed to maintain and steward its most important resource base, it compromises soil quality and fertility through its impact on erosion, soil organic matter and biodiversity decline, compaction, etc., and thus the necessary yield increases for the next decades. New or improved cropping systems and agricultural practices are needed to ensure a sustainable use of this resource and to fully take the advantages of its associated ecosystem services. Also, new and better soil quality indicators are crucial for fast and in-field soil diagnosis to help farmers decide on the best management practices to adopt under specific pedo-climatic conditions. Conservation Agriculture and its fundamental principles: minimum (or no) soil disturbance, permanent organic soil cover and crop rotation /intercropping certainly figure among the possibilities capable to guarantee sustainable soil management. The iSQAPER project – Interactive Soil Quality Assessment in Europe and China for Agricultural Productivity and Environmental Resilience – is tackling this problem with the development of a Soil Quality application (SQAPP) that links soil and agricultural management practices to soil quality indicators and will provide an easy-to-use tool for farmers and land managers to judge their soil status. The University of Évora is the leader of WP6 - Evaluating and demonstrating measures to improve Soil Quality. In this work package, several promising soil and agricultural management practices will be tested at selected sites and evaluated using the set of soil quality indicators defined for the SQAPP tool. The project as a whole and WP6 in specific can contribute to proof and demonstrate under different pedoclimatic conditions the impact of Conservation Agriculture practices on soil quality and function as was named the call under which this project was submitted.

Agriculture and forest: A sustainable strategy in the Brazilian Amazon.

Large-scale agriculture is increasing in anthropogenically modified areas in the Amazon Basin. Crops such as soybean, maize, oil palm, and others are being introduced to supply the world demand for food and energy. However, the current challenge is to enhance the sustainability of these areas by increasing efficiency of production chains and to improve environmental services. The Amazon Basin has experienced a paradigm shift away from the traditional slash-and-burn agricultural practices, which offers decision makers the opportunity to make innovative interventions to enhance the productivity in previously degraded areas by using trees to ecological advantage. This study describes a successful experiment integrating the production of soybean and paricá (Glycine max L. and Schizolobium amazonicum) based on previous research that indicated potential topoclimatic zones for planting paricá in the Brazilian state of Pará. This paper shows that a no-tillage system reduces the effects of drought compared to conventional tillage still used by many farmers in the region. The integrated system was implemented during the 2014/2015 season in 234.6 ha in the high-potential zone in the municipality of Ulianópolis, Pará. Both soybean and paricá were planted simultaneously. Paricá was planted in 5 m x 2 m inter-tree spacing totaling 228x103 trees per hectare and soybean, in 4 m x 100 m spacing, distributed in nine rows with a 0.45 m inter-row distance, occupying 80% of the area. The harvested soybean production was 3.4 t ha-1, higher than other soybean monocultures in eastern Pará. Paricá benefited from soybean fertilization in the first year: It exhibited rapid development in height (3.26 m) and average diameter (3.85 cm). Trees and crop rotation over the following years is six years for forest species and one year for each crop. Our results confirm there are alternatives to the current production systems able to diminish negative impacts resulting from monoculture. In addition, the system provided environmental services such as reduced soil erosion and increased carbon stock by soil cover with no-tillage soybean cultivation. The soybean cover contributes to increased paricá thermal regulation and lower forestry costs. We concluded that innovative interventions are important to show local farmers that it is possible to adapt an agroforest system to large-scale production, thus changing the Amazon.

Mapping spatial and temporal potassium balances in Brazilian soils of south-west Goias.

Introduction: Brazil, is one of the main agricultural producers in the world ranking 1st in the production of sugarcane, coffee and oranges. It is also 2nd as world producer of soybeans and a leader in the harvested yields of many other crops. The annual consumption of mineral fertilizers exceeds 20 million mt, 30% of which corresponds to potash fertilizers (ANDA, 2006). From this statistic it may be supposed that fertilizer application in Brazil is rather high, compared with many other countries. However, even if it is assumed that only one fourth of this enormous 8.5 million km2 territory is used for agriculture, average levels of fertilizer application per hectare of arable land are not high enough for sustainable production. One of the major constraints is the relatively low natural fertility status of the soils which contain excessive Fe and Al oxides. Agriculture is also often practised on sandy soils so that the heavy rainfall causes large losses of nutrients through leaching. In general, nutrient removal by crops such as sugarcane and tropical fruits is much more than the average nutrient application via fertilization, especially in regions with a long history of agricultural production. In the recently developed areas, especially in the Cerrado (Brazilian savanna) where agriculture has expanded since 1980, soils are even poorer than in the "old" agricultural regions, and high costs of mineral fertilizers have become a significant input factor in determining soybean, maize and cotton planting. The consumption of mineral fertilizers throughout Brazil is very uneven. According to the 1995/96 Agricultural Census, only in eight of the total of 26 Brazilian states, were 50 per cent or more of the farms treated "systematically" with mineral fertilizers; in many states it was less than 25 per cent, and in five states even less than 12 per cent (Brazilian Institute for Geography and Statistics; Censo Agropecuario1995/96, Instituto Brazileiro de Geografia e Estadistica; IBGE, www.ibge.gov.br). The geographical application distribution pattern of mineral fertilizers may be considered as an important field of research. Understanding geographical disparities in fertilization level requires a complex approach. This includes evaluation of the availability of nutrients in the soil (and related soil properties e.g. CEC and texture), the input of nutrients with fertilizer application, and the removal of nutrients by harvested yields. When all these data are compiled, it is possible to evaluate the balance of particular nutrients for certain areas, and make conclusions as to where agricultural practices should be optimized. This kind of research is somewhat complicated, because it relies on completely different sources of data, usually from incomparable data sources, e.g. soil characteristics attributed to soil type areas, in contrast to yields by administrative regions, or farms. A priority tool in this case is the Geographical Information System (GIS), which enables attribution of data from different fields to the same territorial units, and makes possible integration of these data in an "inputoutput" model, where "input" is the natural availability of a nutrient in the soil plus fertilization, and "output" export of the same nutrient with the removed harvested yield.

Barriers to good occupational health and safety (OHS) practices by small construction firms

The construction industry has long been considered to have unacceptably high injury and fatality rates. Previous research has shown that small construction companies sustain higher injury rates than large companies. However, despite the industry being dominated by a very large number of such small companies, little is known of their occupational health and safety (OHS) needs, practices and constraints. This paper takes a first step in aiming to identify the principal barriers that affect good OHS performance of small construction companies so that effective OHS practices can be developed to improve this in future. The contents of the literature are first summarised, in which three critical barriers to good OHS practice in small construction firms are proposed. They are : cost, time, lack of safety awareness and concern. The results of a questionnaire survey carried out with South East Queensland construction personnel are presented, which largely confirm what is suggested by the literature research and also succeed in providing an indication of their ranking in terms of importance and suggestions for overcoming these barriers. The research results provide a better understanding of the issues that restrict good OHS practice in small construction companies and potential measures for improvement.